Online Documentation

Every perl distribution comes with a wealth of online documentation. On some UNIX systems, this information will be integrated with the usual man command, so when a manual page is mentioned as a source of further information, you can simply type ``man topic'' to get information about topic. If this is not the case, a command called perldoc should be part of your perl distribution, and you can use the command ``perldoc topic''. In addition, the perldoc command will display information about the many modules which are available through perl, and, with the -f flag, display complete information about any of perl's built-in functions. The perldoc command is a useful tool that you should become acquainted with early on in your dealings with perl.